Ian Young
Cultural Reporter
Reuters
Iranian director Jafar Panahhi, who had previously been jailed and banned from making films in his home country, opposed regime restrictions after winning the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Panahi is simply described by the BBC culture as “a fierce but funny revenge thriller seeks to be an oppressive regime,” because it was just an accident.
He cheered as he urged his fellow Iranians to “put aside” differences and issues.
“The most important thing right now is our country and our country’s freedom,” he said. “Let’s join forces. No one should tell us what clothes we should wear, what we should do, or what we should not.”
Reuters
Panahi won awards from Juliet Binoche and Cate Blanchett
The final spell at Panahi’s prison, released in 2023, was to protest the detention of two fellow filmmakers who were critical of the authorities.
His trip to Cannes first appeared at the first international festival in 15 years after being subject to a long travel ban.
It was merely an accident, shot secretly, and was based in part on Panahhi’s own prison experience.
“Before I went to prison, before I knew the people I met there, and before I heard about their stories, their background, the issues I dealt with in my films were completely different,” the director told the Hollywood Reporter.
“It’s in this context (…) that I was inspired by this new commitment I felt in prison.”
Jafar Pahani Productions/Les Films Pelleas
It was just an accident.
The film tells the story of five ordinary Iranians facing men who believed they tortured them in prison.
The character was inspired by his conversations with other prisoners and “the story they told me, violence and the brutality of the Iranian government,” the director added.
Panahi spent seven months in prison before being released in February 2023.
He was previously sentenced to six years in 2010 for supporting anti-government protests and creating “propaganda against the system.” He was released on conditional bail two months later and was banned from making movies or traveling abroad.
He vowed to return to Tehran after the festival despite the risks of the prosecutors.
“I’ll be back to Iran as soon as I finish work here,” he told reporters in Cannes. “And I’ll ask myself what will happen to my next film.”
The Guardian review stated that it was merely an accident as Panahi’s “most emotionally explicit film ever: a film about national violence and revenge, a film about the pain of tyranny that coexists with the normality of the ostensibly everyday.”
“This is a very impressive cerio comic film from one of the most distinctive and brave figures in world cinema,” wrote the paper’s critic Peter Bradshaw.
Variety said that Panah has “transformed from a modest humanist to an open critic of the Iranian regime, as revealed in his punchy new political thriller.”
Panahi was presented with Palme de Orle by French actress Juliet Binoche and Australian actress Cate Blanchett, this year’s Cannes chief judge.
Will the Oscars continue?
Introducing the award, Binoce said that film and art are “provocative” and mobilizes “the power to forgive the darkness, hope, and transform it into a new life.”
“That’s why we chose Palmedo, it was just an accident caused by Jafar Panah.”
In her introduction, Blanchett states: “I commend the festival’s understanding that openings will be held for films to have wider social conversations.”
The awards ceremony went as planned despite a five-hour blackout that local officials placed on suspicion of attacks on substations and electrical pylons.
The 64-year-old Panahi has now completed the unusual feat of winning top awards at film festivals in Cannes, Berlin and Venice.
Four of the past five Palme D’ORs have been nominated for Oscars for the past.
But it was just an accident and it was unlikely that it would be nominated for Best International feature for Oscar. Films must make a film-like release in their country of origin to qualify for that award, and Panahhi films are banned in Iran.
